So I stood at Xerxe’s door.  I was angry.  Two years of sleeping with rats – imagine waking up to find a family of rodents sleeping on your belly for warmth.  Two years of scrambling for scraps.  Two years of begging for coin.  I was ready for revenge.   

I am Nemesis.  My knife was hidden in my palm.  I quickly planned out what I was going to do. Thrust the blade into his belly.  Hug him while you do it.  While you hug him twist the blade, and just when bloody spittle goes past his lips, you remind him.  “Remember me?  I am Lucius the accountant.”

Someone was coming.   There was footsteps inside.  There was movement.  A voice shouted through the door:  A familiar voice, but muffled and distant.  “Who is at my door?” 

 “I am Lucius, the accountant. I was one of your victims.”    

FOOL!  FOOL!  FOOL!  Why did I say that?  Did I expect Xerxes to throw wide the door to a victim?  Idiot!    

Three locks were turned back, and the door opened.  It was not a hesitant opening.  The door was thrown back – wide.  There was no taking a peek.  There was no fear of what was on the other side.  The occupant had no fear.   He stood in front of me.  I knew him.  I never forgot him.  The sticking point was whether he remembered me.  I could feel my body weaken like I was once more strapped into the chair.  This was not how it was supposed to play out.  I swayed upon my feet.  To be looking at those eyes that applied the straps and the needle made me queasy.  I had trouble standing.  I couldn’t straighten my spine.  I wanted to run away.  I wanted to play Nemesis: daughter of night, the wielder of retribution, but my back slowly reverted into a beggar’s stance.  It was him.  I knew it was him:  the islander, the unknown Egyptian, the young man who stowed away.  The torturer.  He was just beginning a man’s beard at the tip of his chin.  His eyes were large.  He was taller, and developed high cheekbones.   Of course, he was older.  He had grown.    

 “You look to be in one piece,” the torturer said.  “Are you sure that you’re one of mine?”

A joke.  He’s got to be kidding.  The tiny knife was gripped tightly in my hand.  It had cut the inside of my palm.  This made me happy.    It was there, ready to use, but instead of cutting him, the following stupid, idiotic words came from my mouth:   “Yes.  I seem to be.  At least, the last time I looked.”

Xerxes closed his eyes.  He sniffed the air.  He clenched and unclenched his jaw as if he was waiting for me to end his life right there at the door.  “Well then, Lucius the accountant, get it over with,” he said.  “Take your knife and get it over with.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Xerxes opened his eyes.  “Where is your knife?  You must have brought a knife.”  

I slowly showed him my weapon, reaching out and opening my fingers so that he could see.  It was small, with a dull blade.  The handle was carved with unvarnished wood.  A child’s toy.  A weapon made by a wannabe gladiator.  It was crudely made.

The torturer giggled.  “What?  It’s a knife fit for olive paste on a morning roll.  This is what you brought?  My blades are much more impressive.  If you bought that,” he said with contempt, “…the knife-maker cheated you.  He cheated you badly.  How much did you pay?”

“I stole it.”

“The knifemaker had that on his table?  He should be ashamed.”

I stood there embarrassed, wondering what to do next.     

“Would you like to come in?” The torturer asked.   

Come in?  He wanted me to come in like I was a neighbor looking to borrow a slice of cheese.  Come in?  I’ll come in, and then strangle the little futter.  I’ll be happy to come in.  He had all the knives upon that torturing day.  Now, I was armed.      

“Just don’t stand there.  You still have feet.  No one hobbled you.  I certainly did not.  Step over the threshold, and welcome to my home”

“My feet are dirty,”  I said looking down at my swollen feet.  I had no shoes.

“Never mind.  It is hard to keep clean in Rome.  I shall take delight in the scrubbing of the floor.  You are my guest.”  

I stepped in and almost fainted.   There was another torture.  I was overcome with the scent of cooking sausages.   The smell was exquisite.  Heavenly!  A glorious scent of meat, fat and spice.  I even recognized the brand.  I had hung often enough around the Tiberian shops.  My companions were dogs, untethered dogs, looking for a handout.  My fellow beggars whined and shifted from foot to foot trying to stave off the gnawing pain.  Like me, they cocked their heads side to side, and looked at the cooks with wide-eyed wonder.  So did I.  The cooks chased me off, and left the dogs to enjoy the show.  Blood sausage was the best meat the Tiberian shops could produce!  My torturer ate blood sausage.  Glorious!  I would have paid just to have taken a sniff of the sizzling meat.  The smell of pork and leeks hung in the air.  There was something else.  Oh my Gods.  Bread.  Wonderful bread.  Crusty bread mixed with cheese, slathered with olive oil, sat on the table. 

There were several chairs and tables inside the torturer’s home.  Of which one table was piled high with scrolls.  It reads, I thought.  It actually, reads.  Xerxes was a lover of Homer, and poets of all kinds, and fluty historians telling of distant lands and times of long ago.  He would haunt the public libraries, sending the librarians running for the exits, and the patrons to cough and move away from the public torturer that was known up and down the street.  No one wanted to share a bench with him.  No one wanted to share a table.  Xerxes sought companionship in scrolls, and the adventures of heroes in overwritten Greek Novels.   Pirates, and men looking for a kidnapped girl in some Asian court were always the plot.  In his time off, from chains and knifes and screaming men upon the rack, he recited poetry, and read of ships sailing to uncharted islands.  

The torturer’s house was clean, and the floor scrubbed.  There was a pair of shoes laid neatly by the door.  There were plates, cleaned and still wet set upon a table, as if expecting guests, and blue glass cups that looked washed and dried.  This man who wore the ‘blood red cap’ lived alone, but lived as if expecting…company.    There were two glasses, two plates, and two chairs.  What FOOL would visit a torturer?

“Where is your companion?” I asked.

Xerxes looked at me with a hint of sadness.  “I live alone,” he said.         

It is then I realized the truth. 

A sewer cleaner, though not exactly a fellow you would want to invite to a party, at least had friends.  The local hair-plucker who charged two coppers per leg, and 20 coppers per armpit had friends.  The tax collector had friends.  The torturer, especially the paid torturer of the state, did not.

The torturer eats alone. 

Xerxes offered me a chair.  He was all politeness and courtesy.  I sat.  I didn’t want to turn my back on him, but I did.  What was wrong with him?  He had to know why I was there.   I could easily kill him, I thought.  Xerxes had a carving knife. It sat on the table, a kitchen utensil perfectly sharpened and clean.  Of course, he would keep it clean.  How was this sausage cutter any different than any of the instruments he used to prick his victims.  I could grab it easily.  It would take mere seconds to slash it across his throat.   Who questions the death of a state torturer?   Kill him and walk away.   Do you think his neighbors would care?  Do you think his victims?  No one would approach this house for months, until the stink of his body brought neighbors to inspect the interior of his little palace. 

On the other hand, Xerxes had a carving knife.  I was just as disposable as he was.  HE – COULD – KILL – ME.  It would take only a few moments of unpleasantness.  It would only take a short time to clean up my blood.  Carry my body to the garbage heap or toss it in the Tiber.  How many bodies now float in the Tiber?  No one would question him.  No one would care.  I would be just another dead beggar in the Tiber.  How many have floated by?  How many have been dragged from the Cloaca Maxima: mother sewer of Rome?  

“Would you like some wine?” Xerxes asked. 

 I nearly fainted.  Wine.  WINE!  Do you know how long it has been?  I’ve been living on the street for two years, drinking filthy water from the Tiber, and cupping water from fountains.  No one told me when I bought my freedom that I had to pay for a bed, for food, for clothes – a slave gets it all.  How many nights did I dream of the Venus-Day-Feast? 

Bowl of beans

One quarter bread

Half measure of wine. 

AND A BED TO SLEEP.   

”Oh, yes…please,” I said with a gush.  Wine was something for those with money.  The thought of it almost made me cry.

Xerxes brought out a small amphorae and two clay cups.  He didn’t bother adding water to the mix.  That meant the wine was strong.  Was he trying to get me drunk?  I didn’t care.  He sat in front of me as I guzzled.  I held my cup out for more.    

“Why are you here?” Xerxes asked as he poured. 

Not answering right away, I drained the cup again.  I licked the dregs from the bottom.  I drank again, and again.  Xerxes filled it to the brim upon each request. 

 A good question, indeed, I thought.  I dropped my dull olive-paste knife upon the table. 

“I’ve seen that,” Xerxes said.  “If you have come to kill me use this.”  He took his sausage cutter and pushed it up against my hand.  His eyes then diverted to the brazier cooking sausages near the door.  He grabbed the blade.  “Never mind that – let’s eat.” 

I cried.  My body racked and shook with tears.  Xerxes had seen many men cry.  Tears were delivered up at the end of a sharp knife or a red-hot poker.  For some reason, to see me in tears set something in motion.  Immediately, Xerxes was on his feet filling a plate with bread and cheese for his guest.  Remember the sausages?  Magically, they were off the grill and on the plate.  Sizzling blood sausages with fennel spice were offered up to me. Leeks, garlic and wine gravy sizzled on the plate.  I wept.  

“Don’t dawdle,” said the torturer.  “Sit.  Sit.  Eat old man.  Eat.”   

Old man?  It was not till later that I found out that the both of use were of the same age.  I was aged by torture, and he was preserved by torture.

“Do you remember me?”  I asked, watching his face. For some odd inexplicable reason I wanted him to remember me.  It would be a waste, to eat his dinner, kill him, and find out that he had no memory of Lucius the Accountant.” 

Xerxes sighed.   “Do you remember, your torturing day?”

Idiot, I thought.  Remember?  Of course I remembered.  I decided to tell him.  “Every single day.  In my sleep.  In the day and in the night.  I remember the knife and the sting of pain.  I remember smelling my own fear.  I remember my piss on the floor as YOU splayed my testes with your carving knife. I can piss, but not straight.  I can barely walk.  My back is bent.  I am old.  My hair is grey!”     

“Old man, my old Tithonus,” Xerxes said.  He patted me on the shoulder.

“Tithonus?”

“Eos, the goddess, the rosy-fingered dawn had a lover.  She asked a favor from Zeus.  She wanted her lover to have eternal life.  There was a catch.”

I sighed.  “Tell me.”

“She forgot to ask for eternal youth.  Tithonus would live forever, but would forever grow old inside.”

“WOULD I BE TITHONUS!”  I shouted.  I am old! The sun bakes me.  I can hardly rise from a chair. Look at my hands.  Claws.  Claws.  Crab hands.”

“I know old man.  I know,” Xerxes said.  “You are old on the outside.  I am old on the inside.  What a pair we are.  We are a matching set.”   

Xerxes took my hands.  He pulled me down into a chair.  “Eat, eat old fool.”

All I remember are plates, cups, fingers smeared with olive paste.  Sausage grease, smacking lips, teeth tearing at blood sausage, leeks sopping up gravy, and mushrooms with the tang of wine.  My tongue and lips were tired from so much use, but still I ate. I used bread to sop up what is left.  I even ate the lettuce still wet with gravy and wine.  I picked the plate up and licked it clean.  Ever lick an iron plate?  My tongue slightly bled. 

 “Your eyes, Lucius, your eyes,” Xerxes pointed out in a whisper.

“What do you mean?”  I asked while stifling a yawn.

“You must sleep.”  The torturer said as an order and gently guided me to a bed.  He threw a wool blanket over him.

“It is cold,” I said.  A chill seeped into every crevice of the torturer’s house, and slowly and carefully found its way even into my bones.

“You must sleep then,” Xerxes whispered. 

The lamps were dampened.  Wicks suffocated under thumb and finger.  The room was as dark as death.  I closed my eyes.  I was on a bed of straw.  No cold.  No breeze.  A blanket draped over my body.

I could hear the young man’s footsteps as he walked from room to room, performing the rituals of night: closing the house, wiping up, extinguishing lamps.  It is then I felt someone get into bed.    The bed creaked and the mattress of straw and feathers moved.  A hand grasped my blanket and tugged to take a portion for himself.  

“Xerxes?”  I asked.  “What are you doing?”

“It is cold,” the pretty voice said defensively.  “Close your eyes Lucius.  Let me provide the warmth to rest your bones.  Sleep old man.  Let me ease the pain that I have caused you.”  The young man began to massage my back.  “Just sleep,” he said, and then said something that sounded like a prayer.  “I call upon the God Somnus who shall wrap you in the arms of his son, Nyx – god of night.  Nyx shall push back the stars and allow you to drift into dream.”

I tried to object, but I felt two arms wrap about me.  For the first time in years, I knew that no harm would come to me.  No rat shall nibble on my ear.  No shiver of cold shall numb my toes.  Xerxes stroked my hair, and the breath on the back of my neck was warm and comforting as I lost consciousness into dreams.